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Thursday, January 3, 2013

Hawk the Slayer!

Yesterday I was perusing some of my old posts, and I came across the ones where I list my five favorite fantasy films, and my five favorite craptactular fantasy films. It was commented on each that I had overlooked Hawk the Slayer. And I had to admit that I had never seen it. It was something that I always felt was missing, as it came out about the time I started playing D&D.

Well, many moons ago, I had a habit of downloading torrents of old shows and movies that were long out of print. (I have to rant a bit here:I think downloading torrents is morally questionable. I generally refuse to download anything newer than five years, or that is still produced commercially. If I do, it's usually just for "preview" purposes, and if I like it, I will go out and buy it. That being said, I haven't downloaded a torrent in over a year now.) Anyways, I found a torrent of Hawk the Slayer and downloaded it. And there it sat, in DivX format, for months on end, until I completely forgot I had it.

Well, a couple of months ago I got a free converter that creates MP4 files from other video formats, and converted a few old movies so I could put them on my iPhone. And this included Hawk the Slayer. So, for about a month, I carried my old iPhone around with this movie on it. Until I finally just watched it.

The Good: I liked the premise and the story. I liked the characters, and the over all presentation. It really was a D&D movie, and you could totally put every character into a class. Although, Interestingly enough, I saw it as more of an AD&D movie, rather than a Basic D&D movie; the elf used no magic, the dwarf was a thief, etc.

The Bad: Just about every other aspect. The acting was largely horrible (though I thought the Dwarf was well-done), and even Jack Palance over acted his part. Though not quite as badly as Jeremy Irons in the first official D&D movie. The special effects were cheap, even for the time, and I cringed whenever the elf would rapid-fire his bow, or even speak. The music was horrible, but oddly, kind of fun.

Over all, this was a total B-movie from the early 80's. And I had fun watching it! Although I have to say, the entire time I was watching it, I couldn't help imagining what a remake done today would be like. Honestly, some talented artists with a couple of decent cameras and a good computer could produce something better than this. That being said, this one was still more palatable than the Midnight movie. If you haven't seen that...be grateful.

In the end, I think if I can find a copy on DVD, I would probably buy Hawk the Slayer, just to add it to my collection. I mean, heck, I own both of Lou Ferrigno's Hercules movies.

Interesting tidbit: While checking out the IMDB site, I discovered that John Terry (Hawk) has been acting for a long time, and is still around. And I also discovered that he played Felix Leiter in Timothy Dalton's first Bond film, The Living Daylights. I knew he looked familiar!